Deeplinks Blog posts about NSA Spying

Yesterday, the Supreme Court sadly dismissed the ACLU’s case, Clapper v. Amnesty International, which challenged the FISA Amendments Act (FAA)—the unconstitutional law that allows the government to wiretap Americans communcating with people overseas. Under the FAA, the government can conduct this surveillance without naming individuals and without a traditional probable cause warrant, as the Fourth Amendment requires.

On December 28, 2012, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) spoke out eloquently against the warrantless wiretapping program instituted by the Bush Administration and continued by the Obama Administration. In his testimony before the Senate, Wyden explained how the original FISA Act worked - and how, after September 11th, the Bush Administration exceeded its legal authority and instituted a warrantless surveillance program.

In the clip below, Wyden explains that he was never briefed on the warrantless wiretapping program when it was created- even though he was a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence:

Like you, I have been on the Intelligence Committee and I have been a member for 12 years. But the first time I heard about the warrantless wiretapping program - the first time I heard about it - was when I read about it in the newspaper. It was in the New York Times before I - as a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence - knew about it.

Incredibly, the Senate rejected all the proposed amendments that would have brought a modicum of transparency and oversight to the government's activities, despite previous refusals by the Executive branch to even estimate how many Americans are surveilled by this program or reveal critical secret court rulings interpreting it.

Today is an incredibly important vote for the future of your digital privacy, but some in Congress are hoping you won’t find out.

Finally, after weeks of delay, the Senate will start debate on the dangerous FISA Amendments Act at 10 am Eastern and vote on its re-authorization by the end of the day. The FISA Amendments Act is the broad domestic spying bill passed in 2008 in the wake of the warrantless wiretapping scandal. It expires at the end of the year and some in Congress wanted to re-authorize it without a minute of debate.